philosopher or other great man ever died as Jesus died. Nature has yet to make a display of marvelous protest at the death of other save Christ. The sun has yet to be staggered by any other human crime. The stars have yet to hide their faces from any other scene of human suffering. The awful, the grand, the tremendous, and terrific power of God stood forth at the death of His Son.

Christ is the power of God to bring the earth and its fulness under divine dominion.

So long ago as the time when the Psalmist wrote we find that God promised this very thing. "Ask of Me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Rapidly this much-desired event is being consummated. Ethiopia and the far isles of the sea, China and superstition-ridden India, Japan and the priest-scourged countries of Europe, the desert places and remotest corners of the earth are listening to the pleas of the gospel; they are receiving its terms with joyful spirits are appropriating its blessed benefits to their individual needs, and gladly, though humbly, are following the banner of the Cross wheresoever it leads. To the humble follower of Christ the signs of the coming of the Lord's dominion grow more distinct each passing day, and with confidence he awaits the time when "The earth shall be as full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters cover the sea."

PSALM LXXXIV.

I How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! 2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.

3 Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.

5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee: in whose heart are the ways of them:

6 Who passing through the valley of Baca, make it a well: the rain also filleth the pools.

7 They go from strength to strength: every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.

8 O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

9 Behold, O God, our shield, and look upon the face of thine anointed.

10 For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

II For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.

12 O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.

THE CUSTOMS OF JESUS

REV. JOHN F. CANNON, D.D., GRAND AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ST. LOUIS, MO.

"And, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day." (Luke iv. 16.)

Few things exert more influence over human lives than custom. How readily we fall in with the customs which prevail around us! How readily, almost automatically, we do the things to which we are accustomed. Sometimes custom is a tyrant ruling us

to our heart. Sometimes it is an angel of blessing, guiding and controlling us for our good.

In this Gospel, according to Luke, several instances are mentioned in which custom entered as a factor into the life of Jesus Christ.

1. In the first place, attention is called to the fact that He was born and brought up in a home where religious customs were observed. In a previous chapter we read that, while He was an infant in arms, His parents "brought Him to Jersusalem to present Him to the Lord," and "to do for him after the custom of the law." (2:22, 27.) Ever since that eventful night in Egypt when all the first-born of the Egyptians perished, and the first-born of Israel were passed over, God had claimed every first-born son as, in a peculiar sense, His own. The requirement of the law was that the child should be presented before the Lord, with certain offerings, in acknowledgement of this claim. We find these parents carefully complying with this requirement. "They performed all things according to the law of the Lord." (2:39.) In the same chapter we read that, "When He was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the Feast." (V. 42.) The journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem was not for them an easy one. It involved considerable expense and loss of time. Yet "they went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover," and when the child Jesus was twelve years of age, He, after the custom of the law went with them. These glimpses reveal to us a household ordered according to God's word. God saw to it that this model human life should have its beginning and early nurture in a home where His law and ordi

nances of worship were carefully observed. Happy is the child who is born and brought up in such a home! He has a goodly heritage, and begins life under hopeful auspices. The one who lacks this heritage is given a poor start, and is deprived of what is his due. Some one has said, "However we may work at our religious faith later in life, criticise it, remodel it, we must first receive it. That we have a religious life today is due not to our philosophers and men of science, many of whom had no religion. It is due to the fact that we learned to believe as children." That is the divine plan. Religious truth, and religious habits are to be transmitted as a precious inheritance from parents to their children. To His ancient people the Lord said: "These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children.” And in the New Testament, parents are exhorted to bring up their children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." It is a grievously mistaken notion we sometimes hear expressed, that parents should not seek to influence the views or conduct of their children in the sphere of religion, but should leave them, when they have come to maturity, to determine these matters for themselves. Parents do not leave their children to decide for themselves whether or not they will observe the laws of health, or whether or not an education is desirable. On such subjects they have convictions which they enforce upon their children for their good. How preposterous that in the matter of supreme concern no parental influence should be brought to bear on the plastic minds and characters of children! The family was ordained

for the very purpose of preserving "a godly seed." When rightly ordered it is admirably adapted to that end. Nothing can equal it; nothing can take its place. The home in which religious customs are observed, and in which the word of God is recognized as the supreme law, is the favorable and divinely intended place for the development of childhood and youth. Such a place God chose for His Only Begotten when He sent Him into the world.

Many things indicate that in our day homes are losing this character. In a former day when the large majority of children were reared in the country, when life was more simple, and homes more isolated, the dominant influences in a child's life were from the home. Religious faith and habits were transmitted from parents to children. But now, when people are more and more crowded into large cities, and the claims of business and society are so insistent, the influence of the community is often more potent than that of the home. The influences that play upon the child's character from the street, the playground and the school outweigh those that are brought to bear on him in the home. This makes it all the more necessary that the religious life of the home should be maintained and religious customs faithfully observed that the home may be protected against alien and blighting influences from the world. We hear much said nowadays about the boy problem. It is indeed a problem. But behind it is another and more fundamental one. That is the home problem. Let that be solved, and the boy problem will be easily disposed of. But until the home problem is solved, the boy problem will find only an imperfect solution.